Free Moblands

The Free Moblands is the exonym for the broad swathe of northern plain country, traditional ranges of the great Minotaur mobs, that has neither submitted to the authority of the mighty Thunderhead Dominion, nor that of the Elysian Federation.
The northern border of the Moblands was set during the rise of the Dominion almost two thousand years ago, in a treaty (the Treaty of the Stronghold) between the assembled Kings and Lords of the Thunderhead and a group of Driftlords who assembled in a momentary alliance to refuse the civilisation that the Dominion offered. By the terms of that treaty, the Dominion is forbidden to make armed or covert advances into the Moblands, or to make diplomatic overtures to the mobs themselves. The southern border is more informal, and the Federation operates under no such strictures. Instead, there is a broad understanding that over-enthusiastic attempts to absorb the southern Moblands would demand a response from the Dominion, perhaps to the extent of abandoning the Treaty of the Stronghold.
Caravans between the Federation and the Dominion are often subject to raids in the Free Moblands, but the minotaurs are not lawless. Rather, they hue to the traditional order of their ancestors, at leats as far as they understand it. They live in mobs of twenty-to-fifty adult minotaurs and their dependent children and elders. Each mob is led by a Master of Hooves and a Master of Horns, responsible for matters of peace and war respectively. Five-to-Ten mobs will share a range, a large territory in which they all live nomadically. The minotaurs within a range are known as a drift, and will meet and trade irregularly, as their travels bring them together. They will also hold an annual or biennial parliament, at which business and policy are discussed and a Driftlord elected. The Driftlord mediates between mobs until the next Parliament, and also leads diplomacy with neighbouring drifts.
About fourteen hundred years ago, two drifts did convert their ranges into nomes of the Elysian Federation. None have joined the Dominion. The remaining Driftlords have sponsored the creation of a permanent settlement at the Stronghold, site of the treaty signing, a natural fortification between the forks of the Tinwash (known further south as the Goblinbrook, this river is named for the valuable metal particulates it carries from the Skystone mines. The Stronghold is a modest city by most standards, with an inner and outer ward mostly occupied by Mathom, Humans and Hobgoblins, who protect and maintain the Great Meet, an amphitheatre used for meetings between large gatherings of Driftlords and Masters over matters of broad mutal concern. It is said that the Stronghold's true purpose is to secure certain items of great value or peril in a secret vault, protected by the Freeblades, a corps of dedicated warriors who foreswear all familial or Mob loyalties.
The minority populations of mathom, humans, hobgoblins and the Scutora of Olbirion holt call the moblands home. While many of these form the population of Stronghold, some mathom still live in ancestral memories, groups of up to about thirty adults living a nomadic life in one of the drifts, and others form part of one of the mobs. Humans and hobgoblins outside the Stronghold are still expected to find a place in a mob.
Since there is little iron in the moblands, bronze remains the favoured metal. Traditional warriors and priests in particular prefer weapons of skyforged bronze - an alloy of copper, tin and trace amounts of mithrim, arcanite and other rare metals - over imported steel.

Type

Alliance, Generic